Black Orpheus: A Journal of African and Afro-American Literature, a major literary journal based in Nigeria, is now available to peruse online, thanks to the digitizing efforts of OlongoAfrica, a new web publication published under The Brick House Collective.

Black Orpheus published some of the most important Anglophone works, including translations of French work, in the post-colonial period, including writing by Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Gabriel Okara, Dennis Brutus, and Kofi Awoonor. Founded in 1957 by German expatriate editor and scholar Ulli Beier, Black Orpheus broke ground as the first African literary periodical in English, publishing poetry, art, fiction, literary criticism, and commentary. The journal had a series of editors including Janheinz Jahn, Wọlé Ṣóyínká, Christopher Okigbo, Abiola Ìrèlé, among others. Beier’s departure to Papua New Guinea in 1967 saw the end of the first volume, but the journal continued in 1968 under under J. P. Clark and Irele. The journal struggled along in fits and starts before eventually halting its publication in the mid-nineties with six total volumes.

Working with Archivi.ng, a Nigerian nonprofit digitizing newspapers and other culture materials, OlongoAfrica has scanned all the copies of Black Orpheus journals they obtained as part of the Black Orpheus Revisited Project started in November 2024, and supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. Some copies were donated by Prof. Fẹ́mi Euba in Louisiana. The June Creative Art Advisory has also supported this project.

Issues of Black Orpheus have been largely inaccessible for most of the journal’s history. Looking in foreign libraries, bookstores, and private collections OlongoAfrica was able to recover the majority of the journal’s issues, but a few are still missing. Here’s a full list of the digitized content with links to the materials:

  • The Metadata (A spreadsheet guide to the content of all of Vol. 1)
  • Volume 1: No. 1- No. 22 (1957-1967)
  • Volume 2: No. 1, No. 2. (No. 3 still missing) – 1968-1970
  • Volume 3: No. 1, No 2 & 3 (combined edition) — 1974-1975
  • Volume 4: (still missing)*
  • Volume 5: No. 1 (others missing) – 1983
  • Volume 6: No. 1, No. 2. (1986 – 1993)

The program’s Black Orpheus fellows will also be able to access the journal’s physical copies through a partnership with libraries in Lagos.

This digitization effort makes public for the first time this incredibly important moment in the development of African literary culture. OlongoAfrica encourages anyone interested in African literature, African visual arts, African history, and the sixties in general to engage with the archive.

OlongoAfrica also asks anyone with any information about the missing issues to reach out to them via email here submissions@olongoafrica.com. Read more about the digitization effort here.